Sunset's Isekai

by Wanderer D

Classic Greed (Wolfwalkers/Cyberpunk 2077)

A few hours earlier...

"Alright, I'll cast a few spells on the room. They should last all night," Sunset said, taking out the last of the breakables out of Ciri's bedroom. "I'll make it soundproof as well, so that way if I do turn into a werewolf and start trying to trash the place or howling, no one will hear it."

"Well," Avallac'h drawled, "at least my sleep won't be interrupted by the snarls." He straightened up. "I will, of course, make sure your magic protection is appropriate."

Sunset shrugged. "Knock yourself out."

Ciri shook her head, glancing at their guest a bit worriedly. "Are you sure you don't want me to portal out of here to find you a cure?"

"Nah," Sunset said, patting her shoulder, "I'll be fine. I'll be back to normal in no time after this adventure. I'll just roll with it for now."

"If you say so."

Ciri and Avallac'h watched as Sunset closed the door with a "good night!". A few seconds later they could feel the magic being cast and then the field as Sunset's spells fell into place. Ciri glanced at her elf companion and smirked.

"You seem surprised."

Avallac'h closed his mouth with a snap, frowning as if he couldn't quite believe what he was sensing. "It's… appropriate." He coughed, glancing a bit nervously at Ciri. "And you're sure she's a friend, correct?"

Ciri grinned, one of her dangerous smiles. "We can only hope." She stretched and casually picked up her silver sword. "Might want to keep this around, though."

She watched Avallac'h gulp despite his attempts to look indifferent, and couldn't help but smile for a second before grimacing and glancing at the door. Sunset didn't show any signs of lycanthropy she was familiar with, but the other woman had a lot of experience of her own, and if anyone would be able to recognize symptoms like that, it would probably be—of all the multiverse she had met—Sunset Shimmer.

"Okay," Sunset said, raising a finger for each item as she listed them. "Spell to protect objects and walls, check. Spell to cancel sound… check. Spell to keep me physically unable to get out… check. Spell to stop people from barging in… check." She sighed, walking over to the window and opening it up a bit, smirking. "Ventilation. Check. At least with all the other spells I won't be able to get out."

With that, she pulled a chair and leaned on the sill, looking outside at Night City. In many ways, she could see so many worlds, including her second world, ending up like this place. Controlled by corporations, who in turned controlled the government. Devoid of freedom, yet full of the illusion of it, where so-called power was wrestled by guns and violence at the cost of the people that lived there, and gang mentalities that pitted one against each other.

It wasn't the first world like this she had visited, and it wouldn't be the last, she supposed. It just took the right mix of factors to turn things into this. She let out a slow breath. "Well, there's always a light of hope even in places like these, designed to suck your soul into its entrails and never let you go."

She yawned. As she dozed off, she hoped her clothes wouldn't tear up.

Sunset opened her eyes. "Something is not right," she muttered. All her senses were heightened, she was not in her room—in fact, she was standing on the other side of the open window, on the sill above the sheer drop of several hundred feet to the ground below… and she wasn't human.

Sunset looked down at her paws and wiggled them gently. She admired her claws, feral and sharp. She touched her face. Her muzzle. Felt her fangs with her tongue. Panted. Licked her nose. She wagged her tail. "I'm a red wolf again?"

Just to make sure she wasn't in Zootopia, she carefully turned around in the cramped space where she was. Nope. Night City. She glanced back at her empty room, pressing a paw against the shield she had cast. "How—"

That was all she managed to say before a loud hum interrupted her. She stared at the large, armed hovercraft that was floating in front of her, with several armed individuals pointing guns directly at her.

"Um." She growled. "No."

She took off, jumping from the sil to a balcony a few floors below, then from there to an air conditioning unit, then over to another balcony, barely dodging as the people in the hovercraft kept shooting her, with what appeared to be tranquilizers.

Her distraction cost her, as she landed in a balcony with no other surfaces she could immediately access. She turned around, barely hearing someone in the hovercraft speaking over the loud hum of the engines.

"...found one of the things you're looking for, going o take it down, better have my money ready..."

"Oh hell no," Sunset barked, gathering her magic and jumping over the railing. She heard a curse and the hovercraft sped down after her, but freefalling was way much faster than driving that thing, and it was soon enough that she knew she was about to meet the ground. She concentrated, trying not to do anything too flashy.

She could feel her magic was limited at this time, mostly due to her confusion but… she needed to land now, in one piece. She wouldn't be able to survive this fall under this world's rules if she just let it happen. But she didn't need to play completely by its rules, did she?

And what best way to do that than using her ki to stop her descent?

The citizens never knew what hit them. One moment, they were walking along the streets of Night City, the next something landed with a blast of air so hard that it knocked them back and onto the floor.

By the time they tried to make sense of what happened, whatever had landed there was gone, and the only indication that there had been something was that they had been knocked down, and the militech hovercraft above them with the cursing mercs inside.

"Okay," Sunset muttered under her breath as she made her way, panting, around the alleys behind the large buildings, "so pulling a Vegeta was the opposite of 'not flashy'. Note to self: Featherfall. Use featherfall next time. That and for some reason I'm… very tired from that."

She chuckled in a slightly self-deprecating way and took stock of where she was. Despite being in California, she had somehow ended in Tokyo. Which made no sense, but everyone here was talking in Japanese. She grimaced at the scents and noises of the city, but she couldn't detect that many animals other than rats and the odd feline.

Still hiding, she peeked around a corner, noticing a large truck was just turning the corner. If she wanted a good chance of sniffing around the city, she could probably hitch a ride in it, and see if she could catch a whiff of something.

The moment the opportunity presented itself, just as the truck finished its turn, she dashed through, her four limbs moving her faster than any of the people around could move without enhancements, and certainly quietly enough to not alert them.

Two seconds later, she was settled between two crates, her eyes exploring the sights, and her ears and nose alert. She heard and saw the hovercraft from earlier exploring the area, but they thought they were following a normal animal, and so never realized that she'd think of something like this.

Night City was by no means small, and it took a couple of hours before they had made it out of the city center area into the more industrial outskirts, far from any Japanese or Chinese speaking areas. Now there was a bit more space around her, but it was pretty much still urban territory. Factories, concrete office buildings, warehouses and even a few apartment complexes decorated the land, sometimes with huge empty lots around them, and sometimes filled to the brim with metal shipping containers in various states of disrepair. 

One thing that remained consistent during her travels was the gunshots. No matter what area of the city she visited, there were always gunshots, and never as far as she would hope. Gangs would engage the police openly, and the officers would start shooting on the slightest provocation. It seldom ended well for the gangs, as police was quick to respond, and they never asked questions.

And although those noises and sights continued well into the industrial area and the coast, they were joined by something else. A new scent… it felt.. familiar.

Sunset waited until the truck slowed down. At this time at night—and in this area—the driver had given up on full stops, merely slowing down, then rolling through carefully rather than coming to a complete halt, so Sunset timed her move to the almost-pullback feeling of the air brakes hitting in before jumping and dashing into the darkness between lamp posts.

The truck was gone in seconds, but Sunset didn't pay any mind to it. She had… new scents. The twirling mists that made up the scents around her varied in color and strength to her inner sight, but there were three… that were not human. They were familiar, kin-like to her in this form… wolves. She was missing one, but she wasn't' about to complain.

Her sensitive nose isolated the scents she wanted to follow, and her spiritual eye told the tale as she followed in their pawsteps. The trio had arrived nearby, outside a factory in plain view of the city. They had been scared, confused. They had cuddled together as they tried to make sense of what had happened… and then… other scents.

Bipeds. Humans with as much metal as flesh. Reeking of oil, chemicals, burnt skin, smoke and gunpowder. They had surrounded them.

The wolves had tried to muster their courage, but they had been overwhelmed. There was no blood, thankfully. Their smell-trail took her around the warehouse into a crumbling set of offices around an old factory.

She could see the humans there now… grotesquely modified with cyber mods to the extent that even most of their faces had been replaced by camera lenses and cables. The factory reeked of death, but the wolves' scent was strong.

She needed a plan… she needed to contact them, and then Ciri, but she also needed to understand a little more of how she had transformed before she was willing to really use her magic or skills in this world… and the answers lay within.

"So, how to get in there?" she muttered, studying the humans (if they could be called that) hanging around the factory. After a moment, she grinned, her fangs almost glinting. "Why make it complicated? Let's just go for the classics."